Edge cases in free software.

Luis Guzmán@Ark74

at

https://gitlab.trisquel.org/trisquel/package-helpers/-/issues/177

typed

Please keep the discussion going on the forum, as there would be more elaborated responses there.

I would like to point out 2 main ideas,

AFAICT, Trisquel doesn't ship any driver that could run CUDA instructions, so in a practical sense, cuda code is not supported at distro level.
There is free software written in C#, Mono, .Net, etc. so, there might be a gray area around those, IIRC if such software is possible to compile / run using free tools, even when written on a trap language, it is considered free software, as the licence is stated.

It's my personal opinion that having the project oficial website on the package details, and calling that "steer users" to obtain non-free practical information is stretching the definition a bit too far.

Anyway, this is an example of how edge topics can quickly become long winded discussions, that are better suited for the forums as those require more people involved and the forums have a much higher participation ratio.

I've mentioned before issues are more effective to track errors, MR, or collaborate to build a fix on a well defined problem.

Regards

So I'm posting this to keep the discussion going on the forum, as edge topics may be best typed about on the forum.

Also thank you Luis Guzmán@Ark74
on the issues for telling me how Trisquel doesn't ship any driver that could run CUDA instructions, as I did not know if these were part of the language, supporting the language, or how these were or could be in anyway linked under some licenses.

I do not know how things like the Linux-libre or deblobed Linux kernel boot up even if a machine uses a non-free bios, though somehow those are seperate programs, even though the bios could change how a program runs.

And I see how an official website of a project is not like Trisquel doing any steering users to non-free things.

As upstream Linux, the kernel as that is not Gnu/Linux the OS, also has binary blobs, but Trisquel tries hard to remove binary blobs and other non-free licensed from upstream things.

So even if upstream has blobs or non-free things, Trisquel tries to remove things like that.

I see how this could be an edge case or gray area, as I do not know how things link together, or are used in a legal sense.

I only see that some things run or link in a programming sense.

So it is likely programmers that are also laywers could know how things like this, or the bios to bootup, can be done without really making one program.

I'm not a laywer or that skilled a programmer, so I do not know much about how linking clauses in the GPL work.

I only see that things like GCC can make source code compiled to run, but do not know much about how things actually may connect to each other.